Plymouth, Earls Of
PLYMOUTH, EARLS OF, a title first borne by Charles (1657-1680), an illegitimate son of the English king Charles II. by Catharine Pegge, who was created earl in 1675. The title became extinct on his death in October 1680. In 1682 Thomas Windsor Hickman-Windsor, 7th Baron Windsor de Stanwell (c. 1627-1687), who had fought for Charles I. at Naseby, was created earl of Plymouth. His father was Dixie Hickman of Kew, Surrey, and his mother, Elizabeth, was a sister of Thomas Windsor, 6th Baron Windsor de Stanwell (1596-1641); having inherited the estates of his uncle and taken the additional name of Windsor, the abeyance of the barony of Windsor de Stanwell was terminated in his favour and he became the 7th baron. From 1661-1663 he was nominally governor of Jamaica. His grandson Other (1679-1725) was the and earl, and the earldom became extinct when Henry, the 8th earl, died in December 1843. Called again out of abeyance, the barony of Windsor came in 1855 to Harriet, a daughter of Other Archer, the 6th earl (1709-1833), and the wife of Robert Henry Clive (1789-1854), a younger son of Edward Clive, 1st earl of Powis. She was succeeded in 1869 by her grandson, Robert George WindsorClive, who became the 14th Baron Windsor. After serving as paymaster-general in 1891-1892 and first commissioner of works from 1902-1905, Lord Windsor was created earl of Plymouth in 1905.
'The Samoan Islanders unite the two conceptions: the entrance to their spirit-land is at the westernmost point of the westernmost island, where the ghosts descend by two holes into the under-world. Long ago the inhabitants of the French coast of the English Channel believed that the souls of the dead were ferried across to Britain, and there are still traces of this belief in the folk-lore of Brittany (Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 64; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,_ 11. 694). In classical mythology the underground Hades prevailed over the western. It was an Etruscan custom at the foundation of a city to dig a deep hole in the earth and close it with a stone on three days in the year this stone was removed and the ghosts were then supposed to ascend from the lower world. In Asia Minor caves filled with mephitic vapours or containing hot springs were known as Plutonia or Charonia. The most famous entrances to the under-world were at Taenarum in Laconia, Heraclea on the Euxine, and at the Lake Avernus in Italy.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
